Free Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp Page B

a
horse would be efficient," said the Goth. "You could get a lot more
power out of a couple of husky slaves. That is, if your driver knew his whip.
Ha, ha!"
     
                "Oh, no," said
Padway. "Not this horse. Notice anything peculiar about his harness?"
     
                "Well, yes, it is
peculiar. But I don't know what's wrong with it."
     
                "It's that collar over
his neck. You people make your horses pull against a strap around the throat.
Every time he pulls, the strap cuts into his windpipe and shuts off the poor
animal's breath. That collar puts the load on his shoulders. If you were going
to pull a load, you wouldn't hitch a rope around your neck to pull it with,
would you?"
     
                "Well," said
Nevitta dubiously, "maybe you're right. I've been using my land of harness
for a long time, and I don't know that I'd care to change."
     
                Padway shrugged. "Any
time you want one of these outfits, you can get it from Metellus the Saddler on
the Appian Way. He made this to my specifications. I'm not making them myself;
I have too much else to do."
     
                Here Padway leaned against
the doorframe and closed his eyes.
     
                "Aren't you feeling
well?" asked Nevitta in alarm.
     
                "No. My head weighs as
much as the dome of the Pantheon. I think I'm going to bed."
     
                "Oh, my word, I'll help
you. Where's that man of mine? Hermann! " When Hermann appeared,
Nevitta rattled a sentence of Gothic at him wherein Padway caught the name of
Leo Vekkos.
     
                Padway protested: "I
don't want a physician —"
     
                "Nonsense, my boy, it's
no trouble. You were right about keeping the dogs outside. It cured my wheezes.
So I'm glad to help you."
     
                Padway feared the
ministrations of a sixth-century physician more than he feared the grippe with
which he was coming down. He did not know how to refuse gracefully. Nevitta and
Fritharik got him to bed with rough efficiency.
     
                Fritharik said: "It
looks to me like a clear case of elf-shot."
     
                "What?" croaked
Padway.
     
                "Elf-shot. The elves
have shot you. I know, because I had it once in Africa. A Vandal physician
cured me by drawing out the invisible darts of the elves. When they become
visible they are little arrowheads made of chipped flint."
     
                "Look," said
Padway, "I know what's wrong with me. If everybody will let me alone, I'll
get well in a week or ten days."
     
                "We couldn't think of
that!" cried Nevitta and Fritharik together. While they were arguing,
Hermann arrived with a sallow, black-bearded, sensitive-looking man.
     
                Leo Vekkos opened his bag.
Padway got a glimpse into the bag, and shuddered. It contained a couple of
books, an assortment of weeds, and several small bottles holding organs of what
had probably been small mammals.
     
                "Now then, excellent
Martinus," said Vekkos, "let me see your tongue. Say ah." The
physician felt Padway's forehead, poked his chest and stomach, and asked him
intelligent-sounding questions about his condition.
     
                "This is a common
condition in winter," said Vekkos in a didactic tone. "It is
something of a mystery. Some hold it to be an excess of blood in the head,
which causes that stuffy feeling whereof you complain. Others assert that it is
an excess of black bile. I hold the view that it is caused by the conflict of
the natural spirits of the liver with the animal spirits of the nervous system.
The defeat of the animal spirits naturally reacts on the respiratory system
—"
     
                "It's nothing but a bad
cold —" said Padway.
     
                Vekkos ignored him. "— since
the lungs and